Aussie living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Coding since 1998.
.NET Foundation member. C# fan
https://d.sb/
Mastodon: @dan@d.sb

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Add a second SSD, if the motherboard has a SATA port (I assume your current one is an NVMe drive). A SATA SSD is still more than fast enough as a second drive.

    Moving to a bigger SSD also isn’t too difficult, as long as you have a system where you can have both the old and new SSD connected at the same time. It can be a different system if needed. Download Clonezilla onto a USB stick with Ventoy on it, and boot into it. Just make sure you have backups and do the clone in the correct direction (don’t clone the blank new drive onto the old one!!)




  • This is how I handle it for most software: Read (or at least skim) the changelogs for all minor and major versions between your current version and the latest version.

    If you’re using Docker, diff your current docker-compose to the latest one for the project. See if any third-party dependencies (like PostgreSQL, Redis, etc) have breaking changes.

    If there’s any versions with major breaking changes, upgrade to each one separately (eg. 1.0 to 2.0, then 2.0 to 3.0, etc) rather than jumping immediately to the latest one, as a lot of developers don’t sufficiently test upgrading across multiple versions.

    Take a snapshot before each upgrade (or if your file system doesn’t support snapshots, manually take a backup before each upgrade).

    …or just don’t read anything, YOLO it, and restore a snapshot if that fails. A lot of software is simple enough that all you need to do is change the version number in docker-compose (if you’re using Docker).


  • In addition to backups, consider using snapshots if your file system supports it (ZFS, Btrfs, or LVM).

    I use ZFS and have each of my Docker volumes in a separate ZFS dataset (similar to a Btrfs subvolume). This lets me snapshot each container independently. I take a snapshot before an upgrade. If the upgrade goes badly, I can instantly revert back to the point before I performed the upgrade.







  • There’s a lot of other expenses with an employee (like payroll taxes, benefits, retirement plans, health plan if they’re in the USA, etc), but you could find a self-employed freelancer for example.

    Or just get an employee anyways because you’ll still likely have a positive ROI. A good developer will take your abstract list of vague requirements and produce something useful and maintainable.



  • At this burn rate, I’ll likely be spending $8,000 month,” he added. “And you know what? I’m not even mad about it. I’m locked in.”

    For that price, why not just hire a developer full-time? For nearly $100k/year, you could find a very good intermediate or senior developer even in Europe or the USA (outside of expensive places like Silicon Valley and New York).

    The job market isn’t great for developers at the moment - there’s been lots of layoffs over the past few years and not enough new jobs for all the people who were laid off - so you’d absolutely find someone.